Out of Office: The Incredible Temples at Angkor

Siem Reap & Angkor, Cambodia
March 24-25

The entrance to the Temples at Angkor Thom

What a whirlwind! We arrived in Siem Reap late in the afternoon of March 23rd after a very long bus ride through the countryside of Cambodia. The bus ride itself was about 6 hours but we made a few stops along the way. The first stop that day was a town called Skuon, affectionately known as Spiderville. (If you have spider "issues" you may want to skip this paragraph!) Skuon is known as Spiderville because the local delicacy is (gulp) deep fried spiders. Now, I have expanded my horizons quite a bit on this journey and I consider myself a very adventurous eater, but I have to draw the line somewhere and that somewhere is apparently spiders! Actually, the whole stop was just creepy and exhausting. As soon we stopped at the village market, the bus was surrounded by kids selling bananas. They were very aggressive, and you had to say no about 10 times before they left you alone. Then there were the guys with the deep fried spiders, some of whom had giant live spiders crawling on them. Only one person in our group, Aidan, was adventurous enough to try the spiders and I was happy to leave that to him. Personally, I could not get out of that place fast enough!

The rest of the ride was long but uneventful, and by the time we got to Siem Reap everyone was just happy to be off the bus and checked in at the hotel. The hotel was fine. The rooms were a little dark and the bathrooms were not very nice, but by now we were used to all that. You just have to remember not to drink or brush your teeth with the tap water and all will be fine. And since bottled water was only about 25 cents, it wasn't really a big deal. Other than that, things seemed pretty clean.

Our hotel room in Siem Reap

Dinner that night was at a place on Pub Street in Siem Reap, which is basically the touristy section of town, but still a fun place to visit. We picked a dinner place strictly for the location, which never bodes well. So needless to say, the food wasn't great but the company was lovely because we had a visitor! Our friend Meredith from the Vietnam part of the tour was in Siem Reap doing the Angkor region on her own. Meredith, if you are reading this, we are all impressed with you! Meredith managed to make her way down to Seim Reap from Vietnam, found herself a great hotel and then hired a Tuk Tuk driver (for $12 I believe) for the day to bring her around the temples and then back to the city. It was great to see Meredith and wonderful to hear her stories of what she had seen in the last few days. Even though we had only met a few weeks before, it felt like a reunion with an old friend.

Pam, Nikita and our old friend Meredith

The slogan above Shaun's head cracks me up.

The next morning our group met up in the hotel lobby at 8:30AM for our first big day at Angkor. Shaun and I had been looking forward to this for months. Angkor is the region of Cambodia that was the seat of the Khmer Empire for 600 years, from about 800-1400 AD. Within the region of Angkor, there are roughly 1000 temples over a 390 square mile area, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat, which means "Temple City". Angkor Wat itself was built between 1114 and 1150 by King Suryavarman II and it was dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. Lesser known, but more fascinating in my opinion was Angkor Thom (the Great City). Angkor Thom was built in the late 12th century by King Jayavarman VII. During that period, Angkor Thom had over a million residents, which made this area the largest urban civilization of it's time. To put it in perspective, London only had 300,000 residents during that same era.

Our two days of touring the Angkor complex were amazing. The first morning we arrived at the visitors center and got our picture taken and printed on our passes. It only took a few minutes to get that sorted before it was time to explore! We began our tour at the temple of Preah Khan and then moved on to Angkor Thom, including the amazing Bayon with its giant carved faces. Even in the brutal heat it was amazing and the hours flew by. Before we knew it it was time to eat. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant right in the middle of the Angkor complex just as it started to downour. The lunch was delicious and it was nice to sit and relax for a bit before continuing our tour. When we finshed up the rain was still coming down pretty hard, but luckily our next stop was a 35k drive out to Banteay Srey, a 1000 year old temple made out of pink sandstone and dedicated to the women of the time, which was nice. By the time we arrived at Banteay Srey the rain had let up and it had even made the heat a little more bearable. After exploring Banteay Srey we headed back toward the main temple area of Angkor again and stopped at one last temple called Pre Rup, built around 960AD by King Rajendravarman.

On day two we met in the lobby at 5AM and drove out to Angkor again, this time to the most famous of the temples, Angkor Wat. The bus driver dropped us off and we followed our local guide on a 10 minute walk in the darkness to a small temple where we sat and waited for the first light of morning to rise over Angkor Wat. After watching the sunrise, we headed in to explore the temples. It took a few hours to cover all that ground, so when we finished we stopped at a little place nearby for some breakfast before continuing on. The last stop was Ta Promh, also known as the Tomb Raider temple because the Angelina Jolie movie by the same name that was shot there. The whole thing was incredible and we probably could have spent a week there without running out of things to see. It's just impossible to decribe it all so I've decided to just post a zillion pics. I hope the pictures will give you some idea of how amazing this place was!

Our very first temple was Preah Kahn

Outside Preah Kahn

I just loved how the trees had taken their rightful place in the jungle

Preah Kahn

Shaun and Aidan exploring the temples

You can still see every detail of the beautiful Apsara dancers after 800 years or so!

Bayon at Angkor Thom was my favorite place. All those huge smiling faces carved in stone. It was magical

A better shot of one of the faces

The reliefs on the walls were incredible. Narratives carved in stone with amazing detail.

Shaun thought he was Rocky after climbing all the steps to get up here.

And more faces, faces, faces

I love this shot because it gives you an idea of the scopeof this place. You can almost imagine hw magnificent it must have been back when it was a thriving city.

The stairs were crazy steep

The royal swimming pool

The heat was absolutely brutal, but I would do it all again

Taking shade under a tree. Our local guide (waving) was absolutely wonderful. His love for this place was contagious

This one had safety steps thank goodness

My lunch was served in a hollowed out coconut!

Banteay Srey was so totally different from Angkor Thom

The interior of Banteay Srey

The colors were absolutely gorgeous

Taken from the top of Pre Rup, which I climbed! Getting back down was the hard part

Taken from the top of Pre Rup

Day two started very early. You can't see it here but our local guide brought us all coffees while we waited for Sunrise!

Sunrise over Angkor Wat

Good thing we had a local guide because Sareth was quite sleepy

Every picture tells a story

The back of Angkor Wat, you can tell by the lotus shaped towers

We climbed to the third level. It was quite high up...

But also very peaceful.

As you can tell, some of the faces on the stone fence have been restored

Our last temple was Ta Prohm- now known as the Tomb Raider temple

Apparently this little carving at Ta Prohm is the subject of a LOT of debate. Did the Khmer know about the stegosaurus or do we just see what we want to see when we look at this?